JÜRGEN BECKER, born in Köln, Germany, in 1932, is the author of over thirty books—novels, story collections, poetry collections, and plays—all published by Germany’s premier publisher, Suhrkamp. He has won numerous prizes in Germany, including the Heinrich Böll Prize, the Uwe Johnson Prize, and the Hermann Lenz Prize, among others.

OKLA ELLIOTT is currently the Illinois Distinguished Fellow at the University of Illinois, where he is a PhD candidate in comparative literature. He also holds an MFA from Ohio State University. For the academic year 2008-09, he was a visiting assistant professor at Ohio Wesleyan University. His non-fiction, poetry, short fiction, and translations have appeared in Cold Mountain Review, Indiana Review, The Literary Review, Natural Bridge, New Letters, North Dakota Quarterly, and A Public Space, among others, and his journalistic writings have appeared in several newspapers. His books include a limited edition poetry collection, The Mutable Wheel (illustrated by Brian Zegeer, MFA, Univ. of Pennsylvania), a chapbook, Lucid Bodies and Other Poems, and he is also co-editor, with Kyle Minor, of The Other Chekhov.